


Under Control

by waterbird13



Series: Tumblr Fics [136]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cutting, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Pre series, Self Harm, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 13:36:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7759819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbird13/pseuds/waterbird13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam insists it's under control.</p><p>Jess doesn't buy that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Control

**Author's Note:**

> This is another piece from Tumblr.
> 
> Warnings: self-harm, cutting, attached mental health issues. Stanford era, so pre series.

She takes Sam’s hand and something wet touches her skin.

She freezes, and tries to convince herself that maybe Sam’s hand is just a little wet, but it doesn’t feel right. She looks down, and, sure enough, it’s red.

“Sam…Sam, you’re bleeding,” she says, already ripping at his sweatshirt sleeve, yanking it up to try to see where the wound is.

There’s once-white gauze on his arm, and it’s bled through, allowing blood to drip down Sam’s arm now. “Oh God,” she says, looking around as if a nurse is going to appear out of thin air. “Sam, what happened?”

He frowns at the cut, as if he’s just noticing it. “It’s nothing,” he says. “Just a little deeper than I thought, I guess. Skin must have re-split. It’ll stop.”

“Sam, it’s bleeding _a lot_ ,” Jess emphasizes, and she knows Sam has a weird relation with his own body and injuries–the guy takes being tackled in pickup football, getting all knocked around, like it’s absolutely nothing–but she’s not actually sure if he processes the blood.

He shrugs. “It’ll stop. It always does.”

Jess blanches at that. She thinks for a moment that it’s just another reference to something ugly from Sam’s past, the little hints he seems to drop by accident all the time. But then her eyes really focus, and she sees the other cuts up and down his arms.

She pulls him off the footpath and under a tree, so they can have at least some semblance of privacy. “You do this to yourself?” she asks. Demands, really, and maybe she shouldn’t have said it like that, because Sam flinches a bit.

“It’s not a big deal,” he says. “I have it under control.”

“You’re bleeding,” she argues. “It could be infected. Hell, you have…dozens, Sam, any one of them could have been…”

“I know how to clean a wound, Jess. Plenty of practice.”

“That’s not the point!” She says, frustrated. “Sam, you’re hurting yourself. Can’t you see how that’s scary?”

Sam looks very, very small suddenly. “It’s how it is,” he says. “It helps, Jess, okay? I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t help.”

“Help what?”

“Help keep me…balanced. Deal with things.”

“How ‘bout a therapist?” she asks. “Sam, you could–you could talk to someone. The school can hook you up with that. You don’t have to take care of it on your own. I’ll listen. I’ll help where I can.”

Sam just looks at her. “This is important to you.”

She nods rapidly. “Very.”

He considers a moment longer. “Then I’ll do it, I guess,” he says. “If it means so much, I’ll see one of the therapists.”

Jess smiles blindingly, and thinks, hopes, that someday soon, Sam will want to take care of himself for his own sake. But this is a good stop-gap measure, she supposes.


End file.
